From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Using the GNU GMP Library for Bignums in Emacs Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:39:26 -0400 Message-ID: References: <29f933ac-a6bf-8742-66a7-0a9d6d3e5a88@disroot.org> <83bmecy6fx.fsf@gnu.org> <0d3175d8-d996-651e-b221-71978bde3a65@cs.ucla.edu> <51e619e0-ee38-eb97-6c1d-0925b675290a@disroot.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1524454720 16720 195.159.176.226 (23 Apr 2018 03:38:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 03:38:40 +0000 (UTC) Cc: eliz@gnu.org, dancol@dancol.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, eggert@cs.ucla.edu To: Philipp Stephani Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Apr 23 05:38:36 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fASJG-0004Ea-OO for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 23 Apr 2018 05:38:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33823 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fASLL-0006Jq-OD for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:40:43 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57716) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fASKK-0006H6-18 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:39:41 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fASKI-0005Yv-Rd for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:39:40 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:33579) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fASK7-0005Rg-KL; Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:39:27 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1fASK6-0005Kn-UY; Sun, 22 Apr 2018 23:39:26 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from Philipp Stephani on Sun, 22 Apr 2018 13:00:27 +0000) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:224797 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Integer-Basics.html), > and they are documented to be pure value types, i.e. same-valued integers > are the same object ( > https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Equality-Predicates.html). > Especially the second property is widely used. This will continue to be true for all the integers that are currently representable. If we document that, maybe we won't have a lot of places to fix. > Or we could make them different types: the usual operators on > fixnums would return fixnums, and the usual operators on bignums > would return bignums. Mixing both would always return a bignum. Having two data types for integers would be a nuisance for many Lisp programs. It won't simplify anything, and it won't reduce the changes needed in Lisp programs because of bignums. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.